Native American Navajo photos

Diné Bikeyah is the land of the People. Diné Bikeyah exists in the heart of the Diné as hozhoogi---the beauty of life.

Diné Bikeyah also lies between the peaks of four Sacred Mountains.

White Shell Peak in the east, Mount Blanca, Colorado
Blue Turquoise Mountain to the south, Mount Taylor, New Mexico
Yellow Abalone Shell Mountain in the west, San Francisco Peak, Arizona
Black Coal Mountain on the north, Mount Hesperus, Colorado

It is said by anthropologists that the Diné have lived in Diné Bikeyah for six or seven hundred years. That their ancestors migrated across the great ice mass on the Bering Sea thousands of years ago and then south along the Canadian coast. Yet the oral history of the People tells a different story. A story rich in mythology and allegory. The Diné creation story says they have always been here.

The oral history of the Diné has many versions including one that describes twelve underworlds each grouped with three layers in, four "rooms" which are also called worlds.The Creator had a thought that created Light in the East. Then the thought went South to create Water, West to create Air, and North to create pollen from emptiness. This pollen became Earth.

The Morning Spirit Song is sung in remembrance of this creation story.

Morning Spirit Song

The Morning Spirit song sings of the abundance
and wealth of the morning,
when the warmth and light of day come with all
its glory, when all is possible and potential.

You feel the water of life running
over your feet and the soft
wet earth beneath your feet.

You begin to walk
through the white corn fields as the pollen blesses you
with the sacred seed of Life.

You feel the good above you, below you,
in front of you, behind you

all around you

(Then the drumming shifts)

Now you are walking into the
twilight

into the darkness, into the night
bringing with you virtue and spiritual abundance gathered
during the sacred day.

The stars begin to come out.
This is the good way, the blessing way."

sung by Billy Yellow 2002
translated by Jeremiah Harvey

The Morning Spirit Song is a creation story song. It sings of the blessing of the corn pollen in the cycle of life from dawn to dusk, from birth to death. In this song the corn pollenates each person as we walk through the sacred corn field of Life. This is a song about nurturing the seed of virtue and spiritual abundance in our heart. It is about taking our life lessons into the night of death. It was sung to me by Billy Yellow, the Diné singer in the red head band in Earl Waggoner's photographs of the "show-you-how-its-done" ceremony described below.

It took me three days of searching to find Billy when I started looking for him. When I did find him he was in his trailer near Shiprock, New Mexico. He was "about 100" years old. I showed him the pictures of the "show-you-how-its-done" ceremony he conducted for Earl to photograph 45 years earlier and he remembered many things about it. His son Jeramy translated and Billy told us what he remembered.

Then Billy sang the Morning Spirit Song.

Billy Yellow was a singer. This is what the Diné call a shaman. He was deeply connected to the earth. He could dig for roots like a badger and fly like an eagle. He taught his medicine brothers and he learned from everyone and everything. He loved his family. He was loved by the People. He was an amazing man. He laughed easily and spoke the language of the heart.

He died in September 2003. 102 years old we think. Nobody knows for sure. A couple of hundred people attended his funeral. Many stories were told. An golden eagle circled over head for at least 20 minutes as we left the burial grounds near his winter camp.

Many believe that the people bring spirit to the land. But Billy knew it is the land that brings spirit to the people. Where would we be without the land? To the Diné land is spirit. But spirit exists outside of the land as well as within it. The singer seeks to bring things into balance. And balance, like nature, is fragile. The gods, the Holy People who created the Diné, are easily offended. The singer supplicates to the gods on behalf of the people. He brings harmony in the roll of his rattle and the sacred shape of clay designs in the sand.

In their attempt to balance the wild forces of nature with a sense of harmony, cooperation and respect, the Diné conceived of hozho. Hozho is balance, beauty and blessing. It is found in art and music and human kindness. It grants a sense of the holy and the sacred to human life. The Diné singers carry this beauty in their sand paintings and their songs.

In the ceremony shown below Billy Yellow and another singer paint a horned toad to protect a young girl who was "kicked in the head by a goat" and was having bad dreams. Billy told me the horned toad was a protective spirit animal chosen to protect the girl from the spirit that caused a goat to kick her. The horned toad they painted has lightning coming out of its claws and a bow an arrow nearby representing its protective qualities. The girl was placed on a sheepskin over the painting. Then the singers began to chant and roll their rattles. In one image the girl drinks water from an abalone shell. Finally the men enter a sweat lodge where they purify their bodies with the heat of lava rocks heated red hot in a cottonwood and pinion fire. These lava rocks represent the ancestors that come from the fire in the earth. They pray for the girl and for their own worthiness to make those prayers.

The photographs in this collection are unique in that they contain the three different elements of a traditional Navajo healing ceremony: a sand painting, a sing and a sweat lodge.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE WHEN VIEWING THESE PHOTOS THAT THIS IS NOT A SACRED CEREMONY AND THAT THE PEOPLE INVOLVED AGREED TO HAVE THEIR PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN FOR THE PURPOSE OF SHARING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE DINE' WITH OTHERS. A SACRED HEALING CEREMONY IS CARRIED OUT INSIDE A HOGAN, NOT IN THE OUTSIDE AS THESE PHOTOS DEPICT. THIS IS A "SHOW-YOU-HOW-IT'S-DONE" CEREMONY. STILL IT IS AN INCREDIBLE COLLECTION OF HISTORIC INFORMATION---ONE OF A KIND IMAGES.

Here's how it's done. First a sand painting is drawn on the sand. In the ceremony photographed by Earl Waggoner in 1958 two men, Billy Yellow (on the right below in the red headband) and another singer begin the "show-you -how-its-done" ceremony for a young girl who has been kicked in the head by a goat.

They make a sand painting of a spirit animal. In this instance it is a horned toad. The horned toad is chosen because it is a "protective" spirit animal.

They then conduct a "sing" where they chant and shake their rattles to pray and connect with Spirit. Finally the men go into a sweat lodge to pray for the girl.

In September, 2002, I visited Billy and his son at their home to interview him about the ceremony Earl had photographed 45 years earlier. Billy, who was 101 at the time, spoke about the photos and his son translated. At 101 years old Billy was a very bright man. He still drove his pick up truck and visited his friends. He remembered the images and discussed them.

The translation was difficult, but what I learned from Billy was interesting. Billy Yellow told the me that a horned toad was used to protect the girl from the spirit that caused the goat to kick the girl, not to protect her from the goat. The horned toad is a protective animal spirit , he said, pointing out that the sand painting shows lightning bolts coming out of the horned toads claws as well as a bow and arrow in the painting. He also mentioned that the black and white mound at the head of the painting was an ant hill that would provide food for the horned toad during the ceremony!

Once the horned toad painting was completed a sheepskin was placed over it and the girl sat on it while the men chanted and sang healing songs. This singing goes on for some time.
The ceremony then moves to a sweat lodge dug into the ground and covered with dirt.
Here only men enter to pray and sing songs to heal and protect the girl. Unlike other native american sweat lodges, the Diné' lodge is in the earth, not on it. Hot rocks are placed in the lodge to create dry heat. No water is used as in above ground ceremonies. The men purify themselves and ask Spirit that their prayers for the girl be heard, that she be healed and that they be worthy of their prayers.
After they finish praying, singing and chanting in the ground the men exit.
and clean their bodies with sand.

More History Click Here...